Brown bread
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| Type | Bread |
|---|---|
| Main ingredients | Whole grain flour (usually rye or wheat) or molasses or coffee |
| 260 kcal (1089 kJ) | |
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Brown bread is a designation often given to breads made with significant amounts of whole grain flour, usually wheat, and sometimes dark-colored ingredients such as molasses or coffee. In Canada and the United Kingdom it simply refers to wholemeal or whole wheat bread, except in the Maritimes, where it implies bread made with molasses.
Whole wheat flours that contain raw wheat germ, instead of toasted germ, have higher levels of glutathione, and thus are said to result in lower loaf volumes.
In Ireland, during the Famine, prior to 1848, brown bread was handed out to the poor. In England, brown bread was made from brown meal. Around and prior to the year 1845, brown meal was considered a less desirable grain product, and was priced accordingly. However, by 1865, due to recently discovered health benefits of bran, brown meal's London price had increased to a point often greater than that of fine flour.
Historically, brown meal was what remained after about 90% of the coarse, outer bran and 74% of pure endosperm or fine flour was removed from the whole grain. Using slightly different extraction numbers, brown meal, representing 20% of the whole grain, was itself composed of about 15% fine bran and 85% white flour. In 1848 it was asserted grain millers knew only of bran and endosperm, but by 1912 it was more widely known that brown meal included the germ.
The brown color of whole grain breads is caused by cerealine, a discovery attributed to Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès of France. Cerealine, considered by Mouriès an active principal or ferment similar in action to diastase, came from the cereal layer of rectangular cells that millers considered a part of bran: later it was alternatively called the aleurone layer. In a statement attributed to Mouriès, if the cerealine is neutralized, white bread can be made from bran-containing flour.
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